Answer True

My lady asks
Have any fairy wings?
My lady asks
For the most strangest of things
How is your breathing?
Have you any pain?
My lady makes such inquiries
Again and again and again
My lady walks
Toward sunrises and sunsets
My lady talks
About lost causes and yesterday’s sure bets
Have you made your plans?
Have you made your peace with goodbye?
My lady bravely faces a future
When it will be her turn to let herself cry
My lady asks
Have you any fairy wings?
My lady asks
For the most wondrous of things
How are you?
How are things going?
My lady shares her heart
With a love that’s flowing and flowing and flowing

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Just A Number

Misbehaving twenty-somethings—
Marching in a row
Aggravated sixty-somethings—
Have forgotten what they ought to know

Oldish and youngish—
Not sure wherefore is the right
Love comes in from the other way;
It’s gonna be a very long night

End stage eighty-somethings—
Head for their nursing home bed
Unaccountable teenyboppers—
Would rather be most anywhere else instead

Newborn steamy babies—
Shine with all their total love
Dead and buried 100-somethings—
Soar with the praeternatural deities above

Numbers adhere to the ages—
It pretty much adds up well
Who old are are you?
Won’t you tell?

Ritardando

Chubby cheeked cherub
Racing with the wind and the cat,
All is simply simple.
All is hugs and parents’ smile.
Now homework weighs so much.
Nary a grin in quite a while.
How goes it?
We’ll see.
So she is now gone
Like a faded away chord.
The little angel has flown;
A young lady is now aboard.
How goes it?
We’ll see.

Now abed in New Burnt Oaks;
The white coat says six months or so.
Daughter is my power attorney—
Do you need anything Papa…no, baby, no.
But do you remember racing the wind?
But do you remember hugs all day?
I’m so sorry I can’t run with you now.
I’m sorry things have turned out this way.
How goes it?
We’ll see.

Now I am gone away
Like a faded away minor chord.
Daughter chases grandson across the yard.
Both are very much simply adored.
How will it all go?
You’ll see.

Hospice Junction

So ready to cry in your arms,
But today’s broken heart is so déclassé.
I hold my iPhone in my clammy hand,
But mustn’t text when you’ve nothing to say.
Broken low down here in Hospice Junction:
I see pretty flowers wreathing the pretty birds.
I hear some pretty lady chaplain
Breathlessly whispering her fine holy words.
Some seventy-two have now come and gone—
The team completing some of their unending chore.
They’ve resurfaced that old tattered roadway, and,
And, another admission: how do they go on any more?
The Sun and Dawn drags up another new day,
Nurses and the all will shoo away the Dark and the Harms.
And they won’t get home until way after dark
O so ready to cry in your arms.

Just Thinking

Thinking young
I thought young
Flying and getting it all
Now older
Thinking less bolder
I grieve for my friend after a fall
She’s a lady
Who may have lived shady
Now sees her final goodbyes
Thinking plain
I think I might not see her again
I pray it’ll be peaceful/pain-free as she dies
Thinking young
I thought young
Playing and winning in the end
Thinking now about age
I turn to my own aging page
Writing thanks for my old friend—
Since it’s understanding we’ve won